196. Of the Pope.
197. Constantine wrote these words in answer to the appeal of the Donatists after the Council of Arles. They are to be found in the same document from which Optatus has already quoted in chapter xxiii (Appendix, p. 397).
198. petiit, ut ei reverti licuisset et nec ad Carthaginem accederet (PG). Ziwsa, however, prints asterisks * * * between licuisset and ad Carthaginem and suggests that Ad ea mandatum, ne should be inserted after licuisset. RBv have revertenti ad Carthaginem contingeret, which cannot be translated. The version read at the Conference at Carthage in 411 was the same as that of PG without the nec. ' Donatus asked that he might return and go to Carthage.' It was this version which afforded the Donatists their opportunity of pretending that Constantine had given Donatus leave to go to Carthage and kept Caecilian at Brescia, but we shall see immediately that when Caecilian heard that Donatus had gone to Carthage, he left Brescia and went there himself. It is this fact that makes it probable either that the nec in PG was in the original text of Optatus, or that some such emendation as that of Ziwsa must be adopted.
199. suffragatore.
200. Cf. S. Aug. Brev. coll. xx, 38.
201. ut remotis duobus unum ordinarent RBvb. P has ut remotis binis singulos ordinarent. Du Pin has removed the sentence from his text, (as I think,) quite unwarrantably in the face of the MSS. authority.
202. ubi esset Catholica.
203. ut dicereni illam esse Catholicam, quae esset in toto orbe terrarum diffusa. This definition is really an etymological one; it became famous in the Donatist controversy, and is frequently cited and referred to by St. Augustine.
( a ) ἡ καθολικὴ Ἐκκλησία or Ecclesia Calholica almost always means, in the Fathers, the Church militant on earth at the time when they wrote. Thus even at the beginning of the second century the word Catholic is used by St. Ignatius (Ep. ad Smyrn. 8) for the true Church throughout the world, in contrast with heretical sects. It is also found four times in The Letter of the Church of Smyrna on the Martyrdom of the holy Polycarp: Τῆς ἁγίας καὶ καθολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας (ad init.) ; Τῆς κατὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην καθολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας (viii, xix); Τῆς ἐν Σμύρνῃ καθολικῆς Ἐκκλεσίας .
( b ) The word 'Church' is sometimes used in another sense to denote the Church on earth in all times and places, and the epithet Catholic is still strictly in place. For example, later in the second century St. Clement of Alexandria wrote as follows (Strom. VII, xvii, 106, 107):----'It needs no long discourse to prove that the merely human assemblies which they have instituted were later in time than the Catholic Church. . . . We say then that the ancient and Catholic Church stands alone . . . gathering together into the unity of the One Faith, built upon the fitting covenants or rather upon the one Covenant given at different times, all those who have been already therein enrolled' etc.
( c ) The Church is also said to include not only her children on earth, but also the holy dead. Thus St. Augustine ( De Civ. Dei xx, 9): 'Neither are the souls of the holy dead separated from the Church, which even now is the Kingdom of Christ.' In this most comprehensive sense the epithet Catholic is rarely (if ever) applied to the word 'Church.' Should any case perchance exist where a Father so employs the word Catholic, it would be 'less properly' (as opposed to the general patristic usage)----in the sense that the Blessed souls in Heaven and in Purgatory belonged to the Catholic Church when they were living on earth. It seems well to note this, because there has sometimes been confusion on the point amongst Non-Catholic writers. For example Dr. Darwell Stone ( The Christian Church p. 214) philosophises concerning 'two ideas of the unity of the Church which St. Augustine failed to reconcile,' and boldly writes as follows: 'that notion of the nature and unity of the Church which may be illustrated from Clement of Alexandria and from Origen, but also from St. Augustine, which lays stress on the union of the church militant with the departed and with those yet unborn, and which finds points of contact amongst living Christians in the unseen realities, is not really allowed for in the Roman Catholic doctrine.' Of course it is pure imagination to fancy that there were two opposing views in the minds of the Fathers, striving for the mastery, which 'Augustine failed to reconcile,' but which eventually emerged the one in 'Ultramontanism,' the other in some such system as Anglicanism. But there are two ways of looking at the Church, as we regard it from different aspects. We find both of these, as we should naturally expect, in the Fathers. There is the ordinary patristic view, with which St. Optatus for example makes us so familiar, of one Body upon earth, not merely local, but scattered throughout the world, with its members all joined together, one with each other, in an actual, visible, external communion. (This on Anglican theories is admittedly not a necessity, but only a desirable dream-picture.) There is also, no doubt, to be found in the Fathers a conception of the Church as an ideal unity of all the redeemed on earth and in heaven, united by the mystical indwelling of the Holy Spirit. But far from these being mutually exclusive views between which the Fathers oscillate, they are two different entities, each of which represents a great reality, not merely 'allowed for,' but much more----apprehended by 'the Roman Catholic 'as keenly now as in any age of the Church's history. The latter of these, however, is not what the Fathers mean by 'the Catholic Church,' but is the whole Church of the Redeemed----whose 'names are written in heaven '----now in fieri, only to be realised at the Last Day. The former is the Church militant, the Catholic Church, diffused throughout the world (as its name implies) and nowhere else. It is of this visible Catholic Church that the Fathers predicate unity, not merely as a quality, but as an essential quality, and a visible 'note' or characteristic by which (in conjunction with her existence everywhere, or her Catholicity) she is to be instantly recognised. This is the meaning of the definition of Eunomius and Olimpius (as given by St. Optatus), which cut at the root of the Donatist question. On the one side stood a great number of African bishops. On the other side was Caecilian with (probably) but few colleagues in Africa, but in communion with all the rest of the Catholic world. So seventy African Bishops, even with the Primate Secundus, were of no importance, for over against them was 'the Catholic Church.' It is exactly the same touchstone as St. Cyril of Jerusalem had given when he told his hearers to ask in every city not for the kuriakh& (the house of God, or Church), but for 'the Catholic Church,'----the same touchstone that St. Pacian gave against the Novatians, when he said 'Christian is my name, Catholic is my surname.' The visible unity of one visible Church throughout the world is the presupposition and the teaching of all the Fathers. This is seen perhaps with special clearness in this Donatist controversy. But at all times and everywhere the patristic conception of the Church and of Schism is, apart from this presupposition, wholly unintelligible.
( d ) There is yet another distinction made by St. Augustine against the Donatists between the Catholic Church on earth, in which good and evil men are living together, and the Church of the Saints after the General Judgement. It is, he writes, One Holy Church, but after a different fashion ( aliter ). The state of the Church now was typified by the miraculous draught of fishes before the Resurrection when the nets were cast on the left hand as well as on the right----and were broken; the state of the Church hereafter by the draught after the Resurrection, when the nets were cast only on the right side----and remained unbroken. (Cf. Brev. Coll. iii, 9, 10.)
204. St. Augustine ( con. Epist. Parmen. iii, 3) summed up the decision of Eunomius and Olimpius in the celebrated words: 'Quapropter securus iudicat orbis terrarum bonos non esse qui se dividunt ab orbe terrarum in quacunque parte orbis terrarum.' 'Wherefore the [Catholic] world judges without anxiety that they are not good who in any part of the world separate themselves from the [Catholic] world.' (Cf. note 6, p. 63.)
205. These Acts have unfortunately been lost (cf. Appendix, p. 321). St. Augustine writes ( Brev. coll. xii, 24): 'Atque inde ex ordine coepit etiam episcopale iudicium Melchiadis Romani Episcopi et aliorum cum illo Gallorum et Italorum Episcoporum in eadem Urbe Roma factum, cuius iudicii prima parte, id est gestis primae diei recitatis, ubi accusatores Caeciliani, qui missi fuerant, negaverunt se habere quod in eum dicerent; ubi etiam Donatus a Casis Nigris in praesenti convictus est, adhuc diacono Caeciliano [that is in the days of Mensurius, when Donatus the Great was probably, like Caecilian, still a deacon, and far more likely to cause trouble at Carthage than any Bishop of Casae Nigrae in Numidia] scisma fecisse Carthagine: de Carthaginis enim scismate exorta est adversus Ecclesiam pars Donati.' From this we learn that the Acts of the first session of the Lateran Synod were read at the Conference of 411, but here once more we have to deplore the loss of the full minutes of the latter part of the proceedings.
206. See Appendix, p. 327. We know that Aelianus conducted the inquiry; we know also from St. Augustine ( Ep. lxxxviii; con. Cresc. iii, 81) that Constantine wrote a letter to Probianus, the successor of Aelianus. But Duchesne writes (p. 12) that Aelianus in the text is probably a mistake for Aelius Paulinus, the Vicar of Africa, 'qui se mit en mouvement pour exécuter l'ordre impérial.'
207. Called Saturninus by St. Augustine, Ep. lxxxviii. (Cf. p. 426, note 1.)
208. nihil tale inventum est, quod vitam Felicis Episcopi sordidare potuisset P. For sordidare RBGv have ordinare, which evidently must be wrong. Accordingly Cochlaeus conjectured deordinare, and Du Pin in vita Felicis Episcopi, propter quod ordinare non potuisset. If Du Pin had seen P, he would never have hazarded this guess, of which he says: 'Nos restituimus hunc locum partim ex coniectura, partim ex auctoritate MSS,' and explains that all the MSS which he had been able to consult have ordinare.
209. liberum esse ab exustione strumentorum deificorum.
210. revelata. B has renovata.
211. innocentes et indignos criminose pulsares P (so Ziwsa). RBvb read indignos crimini copulares = 'to link with crime those who deserve it not.'
212. i Tim. i, 5, 6.
213. parentes.
214. Cf. illam esse Catholicam, quae esset in toto orbe terrarum diffusa (i, 26).
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